


Stay by My Side

by dumprurikawa (rakuenoasis)



Category: BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fantasy, Lore - Freeform, Lots of it, Magical Realism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Witches, i just miss them, im not even in the fandom anymore, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rakuenoasis/pseuds/dumprurikawa
Summary: Graduating student and top witch Ran Mitake's first assignment is to grant the wish of a lonesome sixteen-year old girl who lives in the suburbans of Tokyo. Instead of a quick finished job however, she gets more than what she's bargained for.
Relationships: Mitake Ran/Toyama Kasumi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Stay by My Side

**Author's Note:**

> if you remember a certain yang/sab who used to scream about kasuran in your tl 24/7, yeah thats me HAHAAHHAHA 
> 
> ive long moved on from the bandori fandom to uhhh better things i guess (points at tenma sumeragi and yuki rurikawa kissing in my closet). but i still think abt kasuran to this day SOOO i decided to write this out aaaaa
> 
> without further ado, lets go

Tokyo.

Vast, beyond alive and awake, an eye candy for striking glares and visionary strains, mountains of concrete and heaps of vertical moving bodies flowing along painted asphalts, dancing in brightly colored lights as their rays mercilessly torment and embrace the young raven-haired witch's porcelain and covered skin. 

At a glance, it may seem like a rippling, twinkling, grounded sky full of neon lights and all the other brighter things that shine more than the hallway lanterns of her witchcraft academy. It hypnotizes and entices the young witch's thrilled heart that she doesn't dare fly off to where she's really supposed to be yet; Instead, she slowly inhales the air of what she senses is springtime's tender breeze and tilts her body a bit more to the south until she could get a better look of the blocks of pavements and high-end contraptions implanted on the wide vasts of the land, all in the while keeping still on her worn-off and chipped broom.

She takes a peek at the people, at those whose bodies are wrapped in simple colored fabrics instead of long elegant robes with shreds and loose threads on their ends. She stares at those merged into the crowds swayed and moved by lights and motions. Their heads and eyes are brashly and lazily placed on held contraptions as they seem to pay no heed to the shifting inertias between the builds of those who squeeze into them. She notices the other moving contraptions right beside them, flowing alone in lines and straight motions as they stop and go in unison, as if by some kind of magic she hasn't been able to figure out yet. A mountain covered in grays and snow overlooks the city, its form solid as ever and crumbling, a peaceful and quaint contrast as compared to what its body tries to wall around and protect. It's reminiscent to the realm where she came from, a feeling so distant yet too nostalgic for Ran to describe.

It isn't home, with all its oaks and trees of the forests guarded by the spirits. But something about this Tokyo, this new world the effervescent and talented Ran Mitake has just stepped in mere minutes ago, feels so familiar and well-knitted to her original world.

The thought of discovering the wonders of this human realm, of what it has that her world doesn't, shakes her core and gets her blood even more pumped up. Instead, she chooses to mentally calm her spirits in turn of tilting her head to the cloudless skies as a way to relieve her sight of the straining neons now dancing in the back of her eyelids. Tokyo may seem like an ethereal paradise of wonders. But it's vastly different from the natural, more simplistic ways of her realm where they only had the forests and their magic to get by. She has read about human ways at some point, in books dating from ages and centuries back when travelling between the two realms was much easier than the current times.

But this. _This_ is nothing like what the books had mentioned. She doesn't see the dragons arising from their naps, roaring into the wilderness of their forests. Nor does she see the tin-foiled men with their swords drawn or the castles enroaching the greeneries of the nations. This world feels too disconnected from what she's ever known that even Ran was almost convinced that she probably stepped into the wrong world.

The green rusted sign by the fields however, _did_ say the city behind it is Tokyo. So instead of letting the anxiety settle in, Ran takes acceptance into heart and goes around for a bit with her broom after letting the neons die down, before choosing to finally land onto a dark area in between two buildings, cast a spell onto her broom so it could shrink enough to fit in her brown shoulder bag, and eventually become one with the moving crowds.

It's a good that she's wearing her boots, she thinks. Normally, Ran would prefer to travel without any footwear as she enjoys the dirt on her feet more than anything else. However, something tells her that stepping onto concrete wouldn't be...a pleasant experience.

There, she takes in every little detail of the city she saw mere minutes ago with nothing but a bird's eye view. Around her, for starters, are people dressed in what apparently _aren't_ simple fabrics at all but are actually violently different outfits, mismatched fabrics and patterns exploded into odd wears with differently intricate designs on their sleeves and strange illustrations and/or other articles of clothing placed on their fronts.

It's a fashion scenery far too different from the unified robes they've been wearing for years in the academia. She thinks fondly of her roommate back in the dormitories, sweet and exuberant Himari Uehara, and of how she'd find all of this. Being with her in the dormitories not as just her roommate but unified childhood friends as well after years of absent contact has infected Ran with appreciating the finer details of fabrics.

(And she thinks that just maybe, Himari might actually appreciate this futuristic spin on fashion. She notes to herself to take Himari into Tokyo some time soon.)

Ran notes back to her own fit: a pointy dark green hat slightly folded at the top with a maroon ribbon neatly tied to its bottom, dark green robe draped and tied onto her with another maroon ribbon, its ends shredded with some loose threads and extending until her heels with a white ruffle shirt underneath, a short dark green skirt almost reaching to her gray sock-covered knees, and finally her dark brown knee-high heeled boots with maroon laces tied to them. And then Ran realizes that she _indeed_ stands out from the crowd. These people don't wear anything fanciful; In fact, they look less covered than she could ever imagine. Ran cannot even begin to imagine the embarrassment that'd come from it.

Something bumps into her body, as if by shifted inertia, and Ran gasps while almost falling off.

The other being behind her, however, seems to be the one more fitfully pissed than her.

"What are you doing there, standing in the middle of the crowd like an idiot?!"

Ran turns around and sees two girls, probably just around her age, staring at her. The one who seems to have bumped into her pierces into her soul with infuriated dark yellow eyes. She sports two blonde pigtails tied up and some kind of light brown outfit with white flaps at the top and a red ribbon adorned at the middle of it. Ran guesses that it's a uniform, as the tall black-haired girl with green eyes next to her seems to be wearing an exact outfit as well. Unlike the short blonde girl, she seems calmer and more relaxed, although almost just as surprised at the accidental encounter between them.

Ran, not being Ran much as she would like to retort back, tries to calm herself. They're just humans. They wouldn't know about her being a witch. In fact, they probably don't believe that witches exist, seeing that there aren't any present in the moving, pushing crowd that they're in right now.

(Besides, she would rather not draw the crowd attention to a girl in a witch outfit. As she stands out and differs from everyone else, she'll definitely get weird looks. Ran figures and foresees that already.)

"I-I'm sorry," she croaks out, feeling the heat rising on her cheeks. "I think I must've spaced out," She then fumbles her mind around for an excuse, her shaky fingers clutching onto the robe. "You see, I'm kind of lost..."

She doesn't mention about the assignment nor about the girl she's been assigned too for this fast mission. In fact, Ran _knows_ where she is. She just needs an excuse so the two girls can finally get off her back.

The tall girl whispers to her - well, Ran could conclude - friend something that she couldn't pick up. The smaller girl, with an expression seeming to slowly calm down, nods. The latter then turns to her.

"Cosplay convention, right?"

To Ran, it just sounds like a messed up string of garbed words. Convention, sure she's been there. She's been in withcraft conventions and the like every season, as it's required of her as a top student to represent her house. 

Cosplay, however, is a different story.

Ran earnestly prays that whatever this cosplay convention is will not be the manifestation of an evil spirit or whatever the human counterpart for such is.

With hesitance, she replies back with a, "Yes. I need to go to that cosplay convention."

The blonde girl squints her eyes, possibly out of suspicion, Ran thinks.

"The one in Tokyo Big Sight, huh? Since that's the only cosplay convention I'm aware of that's still pretty much awake right now,"

She then takes out what appears to be a slim rectangular contraption from the pocket of her uniform and fumbles with it using her fingers. Ran resists all temptations to peek at whatever the glowing thing coming from the rectangular solid is that's useful and helpful to the situation at hand.

"Kojimachi station, which is just three blocks from here. I'm sure you'll be able to find it easily," the girl explains. "Get to Platform 1, on the Yurakucho-Line towards Shin-Kiba." Ran then sees her fumbling on the glowing rectangular again. "You'll arrive on Toyosu Station. Walk and then take the line to Tokyo Big Sight Station. Do some walking again and you'll get there in no time," The blonde girl then shoves the contraption into her pocket. By then, the glowing face has already disappeared. "The trip will take around forty-five minutes. It's almost seven so I think you'll be fine. Cost is around 460 yen."

Yen?

It must be similar to the golds and dimes in her realm, Ran thinks. It has to be.

"Y-Yeah. I think I have enough gol- I mean, _yen_ to get to where I'm supposed to be...Th-Thanks."

The blonde girl sighs and then finally walks past her.

"Hanazono, let's go."

The tall girl, Hanazono, seems to follow suit.

Ran watches as they both disappear into the crowds, into the horizon of neon lights and blaring noises coming from everywhere.

She follows suit as well, except in the opposite direction as she moves and goes to wherever the packed crowds of the city seems to be going.

Hazy in mind, fingers running cold as she lets the inertia and motions push her body into the stream of moving bodies, her magenta eyes staring at the flashing glasses stuck to the gigantic solid buildings, she thinks of the world that she's just stepped into, of "cosplay" and glowing rectangular contraptions and the two girls her age who seemed to be in a rush. The more Ran's mind dwells on those, at how unfamiliar and strange and so unlike this realm is compared to where she has been all her life, the more she feels at lost with herself, and the sinking feeling in her gut only falls further as she trudges through the crowd, unbothered. Slowly, she could feel all the rush of energy and adrenaline being drained out of her body, now replaced with a gnawing hole in her chest. She doesn't feel the shove around her, nor does she mind the straining glare in her eyes when she sees the gigantic glass in front of her change form, from a handsome orange-haired man with violet eyes and a lopsided grin holding the hand of a girl (boy?) with short green hair to a blonde girl wearing a yellow intricate and puffy dress.

She lets the exhaustion take over, the loss and confusion overriding her system, only relying on her legs to walk her through the crowd until her senses almost kick in and she finds a place where she can sit and rest away from the crowd: on cobblestone steps leading up to what she could figure out is a shrine.

And even then, the light detaching feeling in her doesn't stop.

Ran lets the darkness take over her vision, before she slips out of reality and into the unconscious, vivid blurry dreams of home and dad and friends and everything that the human realm wasn't, replacing the strangeness of the new city before her.

—

When Ran wakes up, the moon is still up.

Except there are less people around the area now, meaning that she may have dozed off for not long enough.

She stands up, brushes the ends of her skirt, and takes the tiny broom out of her bag before casting a silent spell to return it to its normal size. Ran looks around to see if there's anyone in hindsight before she hops onto her broom and flies off from the shrine, then from the grazing lights of Tokyo. She doesn't feel the same tingling thrill in her heart; now, she just feels the dread overcoming her mind.

The place she's assigned to, she knows, is less of that. Which is a breather for Ran considering that her first take on Tokyo was too much for her to process. 

She then takes the scroll from her bag, opens it for the first time since this morning, and lets her fingers trace the illustration of the neighbourhood, along with the scripted legends on the corner and the address written below it.

It's a neighborhood almost on the outskirts of the city, a suburban area filled with mostly homes and apartments. Compared to the hustle and bustle of stand-out Tokyo, this almost feels like a village, only with tall concrete buildings instead of cemented heaps and houses made of straws. 

Ran checks to her south and glances at a rather less lighted part of what she still assumes is a part of Tokyo. Her eyes go back and forth repeatedly, glancing at the map in her hands, then at the area, before going back to it again. 

It seems so exact and like as with what's drawn in the map, which must mean that this is the place.

Finding the house ends up not being so much of a difficult task, either. Unlike the vertical concretes littered around every blocks, their house seems to stand out a bit from the rest. It's a small white house with black linings, residing on a hilltop of the neighbourhood. There are bars on its front, which Ran could only assume is a gate. The lights seem to be out, judging by the lack thereof on its windows except for one at the left side with its yellow glow still shining brightly even outside.

Ran thinks that this must be it. She doesn't know if the girl she's been assigned to even has parents. But if she does, Ran knows that there's still at least a third of a chance that the room belongs to her.

As the streets are quiet and vacant, Ran knows that she'd be in danger of being found out. So she quietly lands on a part of the sidewalk, away from the tall pole giving out light, keeps her broom, and snaps her fingers, letting the cloud of magic take over as it later turns her into a raven-colored cat. Her birthmark, a now white sakura, forms on her forehead. 

Gingerly, she moves around the streets with ease, hoping that nothing would come into her way. Ran is very exhausted from her journey, both physical and emotional, as it is. All she just needs to do is to make an appearance before the girl she's assigned to, go over the rules, ask her to make one life-changing wish, grant it, then go back to the realm from whence she came—away from the strangeness and wrongness of the human realm and back to the familiarity of oaks and greeneries where she would write the paper that will hopefully get her to graduate from the academia.

So all in all, it's not so much of a "job", at least not the ones her senior and rival, Yukina Minato, gets anyways. But for someone in Ran's ranks, it's a big responsibility nonetheless. She has to do it right, no matter what.

It's not that difficult.

Well, at least until she reaches the gates and another being approaches.

A _human_ being. But more importantly, an oddly looking familiar human being.

Ran, with her widening eyes, could almost feel herself gasping in shock.

This girl fits exactly like what the orb back in the academia has shown to her days back: shoulder-length brown hair with two pointy parts sticking up to her head, violet eyes, light blue dress with the necklace of a star on top of it, orange checkered jacket tied to her waist, and a pair of "sneakers" to boot.

It all feels too real and vivid for Ran to even realize that she's suddenly being picked up by that same girl, set gently onto her arms.

"What are you doing out here?" her voice comes out soft and but her eyes are shining rather astronomically. She sees the grin spreading across her face.

"Look, I know Mom won't let me keep pets. But I've always wanted a friend. And you seem lonely too, don't you, Ms. Kitty?"

It's then that Ran finally remembers her name now.

_Kasumi Toyama._

Sixteen years old, just moved back to Tokyo from Ikebukuro, survivor of a torn family. Lonely and without friends. Prayed to the star, Vega, for a miracle to occur.

Ran couldn't believe her eyes.

It really _is_ her.

The girl, Kasumi, opens the gate and lets herself in before closing it behind her. She then hops her way onto the doorstep where she carefully opens the door, black cat still in her arms.

"Mom won't be back until the weekend. So I'll just have to keep you in here for a while."

Kasumi then sets the cat down in a very odd room, to which Ran can identify as probably the kitchen. 

Except it's an odd-looking kitchen with even more unfamiliar and never before seen contraptions littered around her. She almost hisses at the sight of them, in fear of all the bizzareness around her.

It's scary. It makes the ends of Ran's fur stand up. It overwhelms her so much that she can't seem to find herself breathing.

"Will milk be okay for now?"

And Ran could only purr out anything else but a resounding no.


End file.
